Benjamin Alfano

Father of NASGA Oregon and Washington State Legislative Liaison Mary Alfano Lupton

Steve Duin: The story of Benjamin Alfano and the debate about who controls end-of-life decisions (Part 1)

By Steve Duin,
on February 25, 2012 at 9:40 PM,
updated February 26, 2012 at 10:39 AM

Repeat after me: “How is this possible?”

That is the question you will ask yourself, more than once, as we detail the last two troubling months in the life of Benjamin Alfano.

In the space of eight weeks, how is it possible that a veteran with full benefits could be trucked out of the Raleigh Hills assisted living facility he loved — on Christmas Eve, no less — and end up desperate and wounded in a locked-door dementia-care unit in Gresham?

Stripped of his telephone.

Temporarily parked in one nursing home where the 72-year-old amputee lost the scooter that provided his mobility.

Restricted to one daily visit from his children.

Drenched in his own urine.

How is it possible that a “protected” person — in the painfully ironic parlance of the Oregon courts — and one faithfully attended by a conservator, a guardian, a lawyer and a sizable bank account could be tossed about in such a perfect storm, a tempest that culminated in Alfano’s death Feb. 26, 2011, one year ago today?

That’s the question four of Alfano’s children are still asking, four children who remained intensely involved to the bitter end in their father’s life.

Steve Duin: Benjamin Alfano’s final weeks are spent in isolation, cut off from his family (Part 2)

Benjamin Alfano, in the end, had MS and dementia. While he never lost his passion for gnocchi, he often forgot what he ate for breakfast.

Chris Farley, his court-appointed guardian, was characteristically blunt: Ben, she wrote, was “completely unable to act in his own best interests. He lacks the judgment and insight to keep himself from harm.”

Yet one month after Farley shipped the 72-year-old amputee to Park Forest Care Center for Christmas, Alfano did what anyone in his right mind would do:

He bolted.

In one last desperate grab for freedom, Ben scurried out the door of the dour nursing home on his scooter, racing down four blocks of Northeast Beech Street before the care center posse reined him in just shy of 82nd Avenue.

One week later, Alfano was locked away in the Alzheimer’s unit at Powell Valley in Gresham.

Steve Duin: Following Benjamin Alfano’s money (Part 3)

I don’t know if there will ever be a final accounting in the passing of Benjamin Alfano.

But I have a copy of the final bill.

And Ben Alfano is still picking up the tab for the fastidious services rendered in his name by the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs, guardian Chris Farley, attorney Richard Pagnano and Oregon’s Department of Justice.

Follow the money? That is a particularly painful journey in the Alfano case because it is difficult to believe the 72-year-old veteran would have wanted so much of his estate — which totaled $407,000 in August 2010, six months before his death — to be invested in the legal battle with his four youngest children.